CraigGiven.com 2002-2017

My previous website incarnation built on hand-coded HTML, CSS, ASP, and JavaScript with MS Access as the underlying database. I frequently used Macromedia's Fireworks to build graphic elements (from my CorelDraw artwork) and bulk photo editing. I still miss my beloved Fireworks—it was swallowed up by Adobe in an aquisition.

Center for Christian Leadership, Albania

The Center for Christian Leadership is located in Tirana, Albania. Its mission is to work with local churches in academic and vocational training in the hopes that church planting can eventually be turned over to Albanian leaders. Their desire is that these indigenous churches will grow to have a vision for missions themselves—having an outreach throughout the Balkans.

I also create their logo, which this web site was designed around. And I added the red and black to represent the colors of the Albanian flag. To give the site warmth, a complementary gold was added and a richer shade of red (instead of a brilliant crimson) was used. The white background kept the design open and crisp.

Qiang Kingdom Builders

Qiang Kingdom Builders is an outreach to the Qiang people of China who live in the Sichuan province of China. The color scheme was derived from the brilliant costumes worn by the Qiang. The distinctive "Q" is used as a logo and "push-buttons" for the site. The red and yellow represent the colors of the Chinese flag, with the elements reminiscent of the brush strokes of oriental lettering. The Qiang towers are another unique part of their culture, so the image of the Jiaochang tower was added as a unifying motif throughout the site. The windows in the tower on the main menu actually light up when the mouse hovers over its corresponding menu item. Work began on August 31st in 1999 and finally went online on the 8th of August the following year.

OHS Marching Band

The Ooltewah High School Marching Band.

Copyright 2008 Craig Given

IOL

Intercessors Online was created in 2002 for an online prayer ministry. It uses a clean and minimal style to accommodate international use where bandwidth was at a premium (i.e., second and third-world participants using analog modems).

Vision Phone Downloads

This site was specifically designed for old-fashioned cell phones before the era of "smart phones." Circa 2002 Sprint was offering a revolutionary service that let their customers customize ringtones, caller ID images, and even programs without the typically high per-item pricing and limited locked-in offerings. This site was designed to fit on the tiny screens of flip or candy-bar phones with navigation optimized for a numeric-only keypad. The colors were specifically chosen for the limited pallets phones were capable of—or gray-scale conversion for those that didn't support color. The site was wildly popular and attracted over 1.5 million visitors and was still serving downloads until the end of 2017 when I discontinued the site.